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Census Riddle: Where Does a Prisoner Live?
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Where does a prisoner live? Where is his "residence"? How the U.S. Census Bureau answers that question will change the reported size and racial make-up of several rural areas, according to a Washington Post story. For example, one New York state senate district running up to the Canadian border has 13 prisons and more than 13,500 prisoners (earning the rural territory the nickname "Little Siberia"). The prisoners can't vote. They "reside" there by court order and will leave as soon as they can. They are also disproportionately black and Hispanic. But they are counted as residents when it comes time to draw legislative districts.
The Prison Policy Initiative contends that "counting inmates in prisons distorts population numbers in New York and several other states. Rural areas are shown to be more populous than they are, these critics say, while urban areas -- which produce most of the inmates -- are routinely under-counted," write reporter Keith Richburg. "States and counties rely on population numbers from the census to draw their legislative districts. In New York and some other states, Republicans continue to have clout in legislatures because they are elected from safely conservative, rural districts even as those areas lose people....'It's systemic distortion,' said Peter Wagner, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Prison Policy Initiative. 'You have a disproportionately black and Hispanic male population that is counted in the wrong spot.'"
An alternative would be to count the prisoners at their last known address, a method that would reduce the number of people the Census counts in some rural communities. And that would change the size and number of rural legislative districts.
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Rural residents would benefit from Census reform
Changing where prisoners are counted in the Census would, without a doubt, eliminate the undue influence that Senator Betty Little's constituents have over state affairs. But there would be large benefits to rural residents as well. Because county legislative districts are so small, a single large prison can have a massive effect; so rural people may have more to gain than lose from ending prison-based gerrymandering.
All four of the counties in Senator Little's district ignored the prison populations when drawing their county legislative districts. To do otherwise would have given the residents who live adjacent to the prison significantly more political power over county affairs. Each county made the decision on their own, but the ideal solution would come from the U.S. Census Bureau. Changing how prisoners are counted would eliminate this expensive and unnecessary controversy.
But more than a hundred counties with large prisons did not know that they could or how to fix the Bureau's mistakes. And there, ending the prison miscount would eliminate a serious voting rights problem at the county level. Counting prisoners as residents of the prison town gives the residents of Groveland, NY more than twice as much say over the future of Livingston County as the town's numbers warrant. And in Anamosa Iowa, the handful of people who live next to the large prison have 25 times as much political power over city affairs of every other resident in the city.
It is now too late to have prisoners counted at home in 2010. The Bureau has squandered too much planning time. Hopefully the Census will change where prisoners are counted for 2020. But if the Census acts quickly, it can change how it publishes the 2010 data. The Bureau should pledge to identify the prison populations in the redistricting data. If the Bureau embraces this interim solution, I expect rural counties to be the biggest beneficiaries.